glance as you pass through the streets, gives you the idea that the chief
income of the place is derived from letting lodgings. Carpetless, dreary
barracks the rooms usually are, with an uncompromising squareness of
prints upon the wall, an appalling breadth of husk-bed, a niggardness of
wash-bowl, and an obduracy of sofa, never, never to be dissociated in
their victim's mind from the idea of the villanous hard bread of Venice on
which the gloomy landlady sustains her life with its immutable purposes of
plunder. Flabbiness without softness is the tone of these discouraging
chambers, which are dear or not according to the season and the situation.
On the sunlit Riva during winter, and on the Grand Canal in summer, they
are costly enough, but they are to be found on nearly all the squares at
reasonable rates. On the narrow streets, where most native bachelors have
them, they are absurdly cheap.

As in nearly all places on the Continent, a house in Venice means a number
of rooms, including a whole story in a building, or part of it only, but
always completely separated from the story above and below, or from the
other rooms on the same floor. Every house has its own entrance from the
street, or by a common hall and stairway from the ground-floor, where are
the cellars or store-rooms, while each kitchen is usually on a level with
the other rooms of the house to which it belongs. The isolation of the
different families is secured (as perfectly as where a building is solely
appropriated to each), either by the exclusive possession of a street-
door, [Footnote: Where the street entrance is in common, every floor has
its bell, which being sounded, summons a servant to some upper window with
the demand, most formidable to strangers, "_Chi xe?_" (Who is it?)
But you do not answer with your name. You reply, "_Amici!_"
(Friends!) on which comforting reassurance, the servant draws the latch of
the door by a wire running upward to her hand, and permits you to enter
and wander about at your leisure till you reach her secret height. This